Social media manager Hootsuite has acquired its one-time rival Seesmic, and it hopes Seesmic's customers are ready to come on board.

The Seesmic brand will eventually fade away as Hootsuite decides which of the social media client's features best fit Hootsuite's goals, the company revealed today. That means Seesmic users will have to switch over to Hootsuite in order to access their Seesmic accounts.

"We've always been big fans of Ryan Holmes and the HootSuite team, since the days we were all pioneering the Social Media landscape," Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur said in a statement. "We're thrilled today to announce that Seesmic is joining HootSuite, and we're excited for our users: they are becoming part of the HootSuite family, and they will be able to continue to build their brand and social business."

Hootsuite, which is not revealing the price of the acquisition, is asking Seesmic business users to try HootSuite Pro for a free 30-day trial, according to the company. The cost after the trial starts at $9.99 a month.

Hootsuite and Seesmic started out as competitors of sorts, both working to help users manage the information coming off social media sites, particularly Twitter. Interestingly enough, Hootsuite was recently named one of Twitter's certified products -- a label that's been given to only 12 products so far.

Seesmic, on the other hand, was not listed -- the reason could be Seesmic's popularity as a consumer product. Hootsuite, which boasts 5 million users worldwide through its free, pro and business versions, is known for its business-focused services, which includes analytics and other tools on top of media management. It's unclear which of Seesmic's assets Hootsuite will keep or how this may bolster the number of Hootsuite users.

A Hootsuite spokesman said the number of people using Seesmic currently was not readily available.